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: : I need some help in picking the most important image in the novel, and some info on why. Would the bull fight be good? why or why not? : [I have to answer this in an odd way, if you don't mind...] : Yes, it is a very good image if you understand it as a surrogate : for war. : But not war as it had just been fought in all of the battles of the : Great War. (1) : It is an image of war as fought prior to the way the Great War was : fought. (2) : And as such, it is not only an image of the way wars were fought prior to : the great war, but it is also an image of all of the customs and traditions : that existed before he Great War but which people no longer trusted or : believed in as a result of the war. : OK? : Now for a little bit of explanation. Prior to the Great War (World War I), : most wars were fought kind of man-to-man or man-on-a-horse-to-man-on-a-horse. : In other words, the combatants were relatively equal and the better swordsman : you were ot the better shot you were or the better your horse was, the more : chance you had to best your opponant and survive and win the battle and thus : the war. (And I have to say this...this only applies to white men fighting : white men. The Zulus with their spears (asagis) never had a chance : against the British with their rifles. The Cheyanne with their bows and : arrows never had a chance against the settes with their rifles). But : Napoleon's troops rushed at the Russians and they fought with sabres or : hand to hand on a pretty much equal basis. : But what happened during the Great War. Several things. The machine gun : allowed two men to wipe out a hundred attackers, no matter how good the : attackers were. The trench mortor allowed four men to hurl a ton of : explosives five miles and kill several dozen men asleep in a tent. The : ariplane allowed one man to strafe a column of men and animals, killing : most of them. And poison gas, once set loose, could kill hundreds of the : enemy or even the users of the gas...at the wim of the wind. War was : now mechanized and unfair. Practise didn't make you perfect against a : tank. And even prayers before or during battle would save you against : barbed wire. Everyone knew this except it seems the generals, who : continued to order attacks across no-man's-land to take several yards : of mud which would be retaken by the enemy next week. : This kind of fighting, and the huge number of deaths, had a profound : effect on the people who survived. Many didn't see any reason to go back : to the way they used to live, or to continue to trust the institutions : they had one trusted - a government, the church, marriage, etc. So if the : characters in the novel seem to drink too much or don't seem to have a : (except for Jake and Georgette the prostitute), or if they don't : seem to be interested in marriage (Lady Brett) you can start to appreciate : why thay have been so characterized. : But does this mean they have nothing? Not quite. Jake Barnes has the bullfight. : An activity which was 400 years old when the novel was written, 400 years of : traditions and rules by which both the matador and the bull were expected to act. : 400 years of one man facing one animal in which the practiced skill of the man : was pitted against the speed and strength of the animal. 400 years of a fair : fight. So not only is the bullfight a surrogate for what war was... something : of a fair fight. it is also a surrogate of a more innocent time. A time when : people had recource to things somehow bigger than themselves - the church, a : government, anything traditional that was ped down from one generation to : another. Anything that was lost in the fighting of the Great War. : hth : Pjk

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